“That’s All We Needed—A Druidish Princess!”

Where is Mel Brooks when we need him? The creator of “Spaceballs” is the right person to deal with this item from the Jewish webzine The Tablet:

This month, 12 students were initiated into a class of women studying to become kohanot, or Hebrew priestesses, at a retreat center in rural Connecticut. The ordination process they’ll go through—loosely modeled on the threefold anointing of priests described inLeviticus and invoking the Shekhinah—came to Holly Shere, a folklorist, in a “dream vision” that she shared with Rabbi Jill Hammer, her co-director at Kohenet, the Hebrew Priestess Institute, which was founded in 2006.

Kohenet is part of a growing, grassroots Jewish movement to reclaim the divine feminine—female aspects of God represented in Jewish texts—and reintroduce earth-based traditions to Jewish spiritual seekers.